It probably comes a shock to Californians that more than 20 states allow community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees.

The four-year universities have that responsibility, right? The two-year community colleges are all about general education prior to transfer, continuing education and job training. That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way it should be — again, right?

Right, probably.

Under the once-hallowed California Master Plan for Higher Education, that’s how community colleges were set up. Any high school graduate could, as many do, take advantage of the tremendous educational and career-enhancing opportunities at one of the 112 community colleges in California. The former state colleges blossomed into full-fledged universities as the CSUs began to offer master’s and doctoral programs as well. The original University of California system, with an emphasis on research, expanded to campuses around the state, and the Nobel prizes proliferated. The system was the envy of the world.

Let’s be generous and chalk up at least some of the near-crisis conditions of higher education in California today to the inevitable problems that come with success. The state’s population swelled, and education couldn’t keep up. It wasn’t just the middle classes clamoring for college anymore — it was everyone. And the open-door policies meant that students from around the globe wanted in on the good deal.

It’s not such a good deal any longer. Tuition and fees are soaring at every level well beyond the rise in inflation. Infrastructure is falling apart. The clamor to get into the best schools from students around the world means that the old policy of admittance to at least one campus of the CSUs and UCs for every state high school graduate is a myth. The “two-year” and “four-year” designations have become myths as well: Both in the community colleges and universities, limited class offerings means that few students can scramble well enough to graduate within the old parameters.

The challenges have given rise to many intriguing ideas about how to reform the once-great system. That’s why it is understandable that new community colleges Chancellor Brice Harris would form a committee to explore offering bachelor’s degrees. If almost half the states in the country do it, there must be something to the scheme.

Certainly there would be interest among the 2.4 million students in California’s community colleges, forgoing the need to transfer to the increasingly hard-to-get-into universities. Other states that do offer the four-year degrees at community colleges mostly do so in nursing and technical fields such as information technology. One member of the chancellor’s committee, Mt. SAC President Bill Scroggins from the community college in Walnut, one of the largest in the world, told Inside Higher Ed that “we’re not asking for the Full Monty.” The degrees if implemented, he said, would be “targeted, limited and scripted.”

They also would be a clear example of what other educators are calling a potentially dangerous “mission creep” that could further undermine the still-excellent framework of the master plan. Upper-division courses should stay where they are. The more responsible course of action is to reform and expand opportunities for bachelor’s degrees at the current universities, and to support the community colleges at what they do best: vocational training and transferring.